Cover not available

In:The Typology of Physical Qualities
Edited by Ekaterina Rakhilina, Tatiana Reznikova and Daria Ryzhova
[Typological Studies in Language 133] 2022
► pp. 309–328

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload Book EPUB
authorization required

Chapter 11
Constructing a typological questionnaire with distributional semantic models

 | HSE UniversityMoscow
 | Utrecht University
Published online: 25 May 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.133.11ryz
Abstract
The paper presents a methodology for automatic construction of lexical typological questionnaires for qualitative semantic domains (e.g. sharp, straight, thick, or smooth). Our algorithm is based on data from a monolingual corpus; it constructs a list of collocations for the corresponding lexemes, computes a vector representation for every collocation, clusters the vector space into semantically homogeneous groups and extracts the three central elements from every cluster. We compare the resulting questionnaires against test data from the semantic domains that are already well studied manually. The algorithm demonstrates high quality results and can be used in the practice of lexical typological research.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous research
  • 3.Typological questionnaires in the frame-based approach
  • 4.The algorithm for automatic questionnaire construction
    • 4.1Collecting a list of collocations
    • 4.2Dividing the contexts into frames
      • 4.2.1Distributional semantic models
      • 4.2.2The clustering algorithm
  • 5.Evaluation
    • 5.1The metric
    • 5.2Qualitative analysis of the obtained clusterings
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (15)
References
Baroni, M., Bernardi, R. & Zamparelli, R. 2014. Frege in space: A program for compositional distributional semantics. Linguistic Issues in Language Technologies 9: 241–346.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berlin, B. & Kay, P. 1969. Basic Colour Terms: their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blacoe, W. & Lapata, M. 2012. A comparison of vector-based representations for semantic composition. In Proceedings of the 2012 Joint Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing and Computational Natural Language Learning, 546–556. Jeju Island, Korea: Association for Computational Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Ö. 2007. From questionnaires to parallel corpora in typology. STUF (Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung) 60(2): 172–181. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dinu, G., Pham, N. & Baroni, M. 2013. DISSECT: DIStributional SEmantics Composition Toolkit. In Proceedings of the System Demonstrations of ACL 2013 (51st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics), 31–36. East Stroudsburg PA: ACL.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dubossarsky, H., Weinshall, D. & Grossman, E. 2016. Verbs change more than nouns: a bottom-up computational approach to semantic change. Lingue e linguaggio 1: 7–28.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Johnson, S. C. 1966. Hierarchical clustering schemes. Psychometrika 32(2): 241–54. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M., Rakhilina, E. V. & Vanhove, M. 2016. The semantics of lexical typology. In The Routledge Handbook of Semantics, N. Riemer (ed), 434–454. London, New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Koptjevskaja-Tamm, M. & Sahlgren, M. 2014. Temperature in the Word Space: Sense exploration of temperature expressions using word-space modeling. In Linguistic Variation in Text and Speech, within and across Languages, B. Szmrecsanyi & B. Wälchli (eds), 231–267. Berlin/Boston: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Luchina, E., Reznikova, T. & Stenin, I. 2013. Atributivy kak istočnik grammatikalizacii: ‘pryamoj’ i ‘rovnyj’ v russkom, nemeckom i finskom jazykax [Attributives as a source for grammaticalization: ‘straight’ and ‘even’ in Russian, German, and Finnish]. In Tipología Léxica, R. Guzman Tirado & I. A. Votyakova (eds) 123–130. Granada: Jizo Ediciones.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mitchell, J. & Lapata, M. 2010. Composition in distributional models of semantics. Cognitive Science 34(8): 1388–1429. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rakhilina, E. & Reznikova, T. 2016. A Frame-based methodology for lexical typology. In Lexico-Typological Approaches to Semantic Shifts and Motivation Patterns in the Lexicon, M. Koptjevskaja-Tamm & P. Juvonen (eds), 95–130. Berlin, Boston: Mouton De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ryzhova, D., Kyuseva, M. & Paperno, D. 2016. Typology of adjectives benchmark for compositional distributional models. In Proceedings of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, 1253–1257. Paris: European Language Resources Association (ELRA).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sahlgren, M. 2008. The distributional hypothesis. Italian Journal of Linguistics 20: 33–53.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wälchli, B. & Cysouw, M. 2012. Lexical typology through similarity semantics: toward a semantic map of motion verbs. In M. Koptjevskaja-Tamm & M. Vanhove (eds.), New Directions in Lexical Typology. Linguistics (a special issue) 50(3): 671–710. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

V S, Akshaya, Beatriz Lucia Salvador Bizotto & Mithileysh Sathiyanarayanan
2023. Human Intelligence and Value of Machine Advancements in Cognitive Science A Design thinking Approach. Journal of Machine and Computing ► pp. 159 ff. DOI logo
Rakhilina, Ekaterina, Daria Ryzhova & Yulia Badryzlova
2022. Lexical typology and semantic maps: Perspectives and challenges. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 41:1 ► pp. 231 ff. DOI logo
Solovyev, Valery Dmitrievich, Vladimir Vladimirovich Bochkarev & Venera Rustamovna Bayrasheva
2022. Aspectual pairs: Prefix vs. suffix way of formation. Russian Journal of Linguistics 26:4 ► pp. 1114 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 7 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue